Broxburn

Pipe Band
Marches Through Broxburn on the Day the Olympic Flame Arrived: 13 June
2012

North of the M8 Motorway and along the line of the old
main road from Edinburgh to
Glasgow lies what is often
loosely called Broxburn, but in practice includes the once distinct settlements
of Broxburn to the east and Uphall to the west. Uphall is often confused with
Uphall Station, on the Edinburgh to
Glasgow via
Bathgate railway line to the
south, which is actually part of
Livingston's built up
area: so here we use "Broxburn" to describe the settlement lying along the A889
and bypassed by the A89 and the M8. Clear so far?

The confusion gets worse, though. Broxburn and Uphall both divide
the old main road up into stretches called East Main Street and West Main
Street. This means that at some point Broxburn's West Main Street blends
seamlessly into Uphall's East Main Street, before becoming Uphall's West Main
Street, west of the junction with the road to Ecclesmachan. At least it's all
"Main Street" of one form or another.

The two component parts have very different origins. Uphall is
ancient, while Broxburn dates back only to the 1800s. The beginnings of Uphall
are best seen today by taking a short stroll uphill from the traffic lights in
its centre along the road towards Ecclesmachan.

On the right is the church of Strathbrock St Nicholas. This is a
remarkably ancient church, whose nave dates in part back to the 1100s. The name
Strathbrock has only been attached to the parish quite recently, but the name
itself is an ancient one, meaning valley of the
badgers, the same origin as the Brox Burn that flows through it.

Not far away, and still in Uphall, is the
Houston House Hotel, the next major
landmark on the area's history. This started life in about 1600 as a tower
house built for Sir Thomas Shairp. It was considerably enlarged in the 1700s,
then in 1970 was converted to use as a hotel. Unusually, the new parts added to
accommodate additional rooms at the time really complement the original
building. The hotel has its own golf course, while nearby is the Uphall Golf
Club, dating back to 1895.

Broxburn only starts to come into the story in the early 1820s with
the coming of the Union Canal
and then the railway (a little to the south) in 1849. But the real
transformation came with the discovery in 1858 that Broxburn and the
surrounding area was built on layers of rich oil bearing shales. This allowed
Broxburn to play a significant role in
West Lothian's remarkable
oil boom of the late 1800s, based on mineral oil extracted from shale and coal.

The process produced crude oil, paraffin oil, paraffin wax, naptha,
gas, coke, and ammonia: and it also produced a bright pink spent shale which
was simply piled up in huge "bings", some of which are still visible around
Broxburn today.

By 1862 the Broxburn Shale Oil Company was the largest player in
the industry in the town, employing 700 people at their refinery. By 1901 they
employed 2,000 people. Many other companies were also extracting oil in the
area, leading to some describing Broxburn as "Shaleopolis". The industry began
to decline in the early 1900s in the face of competition from directly
extracted crude oil, first from the USA, and then from elsewhere including the
Middle East.

The West
Lothian oil industry finally ground to a halt in the 1950s. It has been
estimated that in a century of extraction from 1850, only some 20% of
West Lothian's total
reserves of some 200 million tonnes of shale was extracted. The rest was left
in place because of the changing economics of its use. Broxburn Oil Works, on
the north side of the town, was cleared away to be replaced by an industrial
estate.

For somewhere now bypassed twice, first by the A89 as early as the
1920s and later by the M8, Broxburn has more of interest than you might expect.
Approaching from the east, the first surprise is the sort of 1930s garage
building now usually only found in toy shops. It is used as a Greggs sandwich
shop.

The core of Broxburn lies along its East Main Street, flanked by
shops housed in stone buildings, many dating back to the late 1800s. The
attractive Green Tree Tavern is rather older, dating back to around 1800 and
probably built to service the traffic on the
Edinburgh to
Glasgow road. Broxburn is also
home to a number of imposing and attractive churches. The most striking is the
Church of St John Cantius & St Nicholas, framed by its beautifully hedged
approach.